This season will be Erik Spoelstra’s toughest test yet
The Miami Heat have a bunch of new passengers on their journey back to the top, and they will lean on Erik Spoelstra more than ever before.
Miami Heat Season Preview
After a tumultuous summer for the Miami Heat, the season can’t come soon enough. While there is still plenty to mine from the losses of Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, over the next few days we’ll be looking forward. It’s a new era for the Heat, and this is our 2016-17 Season Preview series.
“Don’t. Let. Go. Of. The. Rope!!”
Those words above hold a significant place in my life in a couple of different ways.
In 2005, I was a freshman in college and in the middle of trying to adjust to new surroundings in more ways than one. A guy who I had played in some pickup basketball games with, invited me to join his intramural squad (which I accepted).
After a week or two, he’d invite me to a meeting of an organization he was apart of. As a return of the favor for inviting me to play basketball with him, I took him up on his invitation. That meeting was life changing and a major influence on everything I’ve accomplished from that day going forward.
The organization name was M.A.L.E.S. (Men Achieving Leadership, Excellence, and Success). The slogan for the organization?
“Hold The Rope”.
Those words were also uttered by Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra after a March 8, 2011 home loss to the Portland TrailBlazers, their fifth straight. The Heat had been up and down most of the season and were in the midst of a major down.
Those six words soon became a battle cry for the remainder of the season and the new slogan for Heat culture. When Spoelstra said it, it took me back to a place that helped me understand exactly what his message was on that podium.
For those new to the Miami Heat culture, “Don’t Let Go Of The Rope” served as a reminder to trust the process in a more hands-on way. When the chips are down, as they were that specific night, you have to be able to see the bigger picture. It also serves as a rallying cry to be accountable for others as they are for you.
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As we approach a new season, those words ring louder than they did five years ago. The Heat are in a place they haven’t been in a long time, both without a franchise icon and teetering on the brink of mediocrity. But in order to understand what may come next, we have to understand how we got here with Coach Spo.
When he got the job in 2008, it was believed that the team was a work in progress on the brink of something major. The team had just drafted Michael Beasley, and got a dominating performance from Dwyane Wade in the Olympics. Wade played perhaps his finest season as a pro, but the Heat were knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. They suffered the same fate a season later and many wondered if we had seen the best Spoelstra had to offer.
Then the summer of 2010 happened.
Combine Wade with the likes of LeBron James and Chris Bosh, and suddenly just advancing in the playoffs would be seen as a failure. But was Spoelstra the right man for the job?
When the Big 3 started 9-8, the groundswell of opinions said no. He had no control. LeBron didn’t respect him. Then this happened:
Comparisons of when Pat Riley parted ways with Stan Van Gundy in 2005 to retake the clipboard himself started. Suddenly, the proverbial coaching seat that Spoelstra was sitting on became blazing hot. It was not a full indictment of what he could do, but many felt he was in over his head.
He eventually found a way to right the ship, by trusting his three stars to make decisions and lead, he earned their respect. They made the NBA Finals in spite of all the drama, but lost. The team was too driven by individual isolation. “Hero ball” as Spoelstra often put it.
That summer, Spoelstra made some big time adjustments. He implemented a pace and space offense that maximized his stars’ talents. Eventually, he moved Bosh to center as a floor-spacing 5. Add that to LeBron as a pseudo-power forward and Dwyane Wade developing into an elite off-ball cutter, and Spoelstra turned the Heat into a juggernaut that won two championships and, at one point, 27 straight games.
Then his comfort level got a bit shaky when LeBron went back to Cleveland and knocked the Heat from the top of the pyramid, especially in the Eastern Conference. But Spoelstra’s belief in himself and what the Heat were capable of never waned, behind the guise of not letting go of the rope.
What ensued was an amazing amount of roster changes, from bringing in guys like Luol Deng, Goran Dragic, and Hassan Whiteside but losing Chris Bosh to a major health scare in the process.
Taking a step forward after LeBron’s departure turned into two steps back, and had the Heat back in the position that they were in 2008 and 2009: enough talent to compete, but not enough to stake a position among the best.
Which brings us back to the 2016-17 season, with Spoelstra standing in front of re-worked team that he has to evoke a new identity with. Gone is Dwyane Wade. Gone is Chris Bosh. The team has been turned over to guys like Dragic, Whiteside, and Justise Winslow.
While those guys are talented, they don’t carry the level of star power of LeBron, Wade, and Bosh. The roster as constructed only has one player (Udonis Haslem) with championship experience, and he’s not in the rotation. The NBA is a star-driven league and while not having one isn’t a death nail, it tends to cap out a team’s ceiling.
However, this roster is better suited than the one last season–the one that went to the Eastern Conference semi-finals–to take advantage of Spoelstra’s pace and space principals.
Dragic plays much better when the pace quickens, and a faster game benefits young, athletic and promising guys like Winslow and Josh Richardson. They can think less, and react more.
Even with two NBA championships under his belt, Spoelstra still doesn’t get the credit he truly deserves. With all that accomplished, this is still an important year in his career to show he belongs on the upper echelon of NBA coaches.
With a bunch of new players and even losing one of his top assistants in David Fizdale, this will certainly be a year that is going to test both the skill and patience of Erik Spoelstra.
But if he pulls up the clip of his press conference after that home loss to Portland in 2011, he’ll find the biggest piece of motivation he’ll need:
“Don’t. Let. Go. Of. The. Rope!”